Plenty of class

30-year district teacher retires after a career of teaching, coaching, directing or sponsoring some of just about everything

Terry Robins, most recently a Monticello Trails Middle School
communication arts teacher, retired this year. She began teaching
at De Soto Junior High School in 1974 and was called on to lead a
hodgepodge of courses and extra-curricular activities during her 30
years with the district.

Shortly after the 1974 school year began at De Soto Junior High School, Terry Robins got a phone call.

A teacher was leaving because her husband was transferred, and the school had a unique need for someone who could teach language arts and physical education. Robins happened to have a major in each.

"I just walked in to interview, and they said be here tomorrow, and that was it," Robins said.

Through the years, adaptability paid off for Robins, this year's sole full-time teacher retiring from De Soto USD 232. A 30-year jack-of-all-trades instructor, Robins' former students include Board of Education president Rick Walker and several of her co-workers at Monticello Trails Middle School, where she most recently taught communication arts.

At De Soto Junior High, which is now De Soto's downtown Community Center complex, Robins taught in the same classroom for about 20 years, but her class load was anything but monotonous.

"I really learned a lot," she said.

She coached volleyball, basketball and track at the junior high, and outside of school she dabbled in community theater.

"And so when they needed a drama teacher at the junior high, they asked me to teach drama," Robins said.

Robins balked at first, saying she wasn't certified to teach drama. But she eventually agreed and had an "awesome" experience, she said.

Theater then snowballed into more and varied teaching roles, and Robins had to choose.

"About the time I started directing the musicals, something had to go," Robins said. "So I quit coaching."

"Then I came to school one year, looked at my schedule and discovered I was teaching speech," Robins said, once again tackling something new. "And then they needed somebody to do the yearbook and the news."

Robins began teaching eighth-grade communication arts at Monticello Trails when the school opened 10 years ago. She most recently taught the same subject to seventh-graders.

By that time, some of Robins' former students had begun trickling into the school -- as teachers.

"It's kind of a strange experience," Robins said of having former students as co-workers. "You kind of think in the back of your mind what they remember about you."